For this task we were asked to research three local and two international design companies that we would aspire to work for in the future.

Daniel in the second part of the lecture had us all write down on post-it notes various qualities we would look for in a future company/ placement opportunity.  This allowed me to gain some insight into attributes company’s needed to have and how to differentiate from companies that would and wouldn’t suit me well.

 

 

LOCAL COMPANIES:

LITTLE THUNDER:

Little Thunder has headquarters in both Dublin and Belfast.  They work on a range of different disciplines all of which I’m interested in doing in the future:

-user research (they establish users needs via planning, researching, and analysing their findings)

-prototyping (they test very early on in the process and so create the right features for the users problems)

-user experience

-visual design (this part is very important to me as I’m a very visual person and enjoy illustration in my spare time)

The quality and style of their previous work is something that draws me to them a lot; they focus heavily on delivering beautiful user interfaces that are really clean, well designed, and easy to navigate.

I particularly like the work that they’ve done for the app Footi: their brand values really seem to match well with mine as something they even made sure to do was keep the app carbon neutral:

 

”Tiny studio, giant reach.”

SUGAR RUSH CREATIVE:

I love the quality of the work Sugar Rush creates, as I looked through their case studies it was clear they were passionate about delivering the best user experience possible to each client.

A key part of their work that I was drawn to was the visuals. I particularly liked the work that they did for Game of Thrones: they created an app that not only includes beautiful virtual reality but also has had a lot of work put into the imagery, illustration and iconography.

LIGHTHOUSE:

Lighthouse are a London based design firm which makes complicated products extremely easy and straightforward to use through the use of great user-research and user-experience.  I love the work in particular that they did for HPI – a service that provides users with tools to easily check any car’s history, status and market value.

The clean but fun UI, iconography, illustrations, and typography choices allow users an enjoyable experience while using the product, and the way in which information is spaced out/ the hierarchy of the text allows the user to not be bombarded with information in a confusing way

 

INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES:

Pentagram:

Pentagram is a world leading multi-disciplinary design company. The structure is extremely unique however, in that they are the only major design studio where the owners of the business are the creators of the work and serve as the primary contact for every client. Something I also really like about Pentagram is the bond that each of the designers has with each other, they all work extremely closely despite being such a large firm, and I feel the quality of the work environment is a lot more enjoyable because of this.

I love the work that they’ve done for Soufflé: a cookware brand that needed new branding, website design, and illustrations.  Everything about the website experience is enjoyable: the clean layout of images, the playful font paired also with the classy and bold font, layering of various images with text, and the bubbly but professional phrasing used throughout.

 

Clay:

Clay is a UI/UX design and brandingagency in San Francisco.  They’re a world leading agency that specialises in UX, UI, and branding to some of the best standards I’ve ever seen.  I particularly love the illustration work they’ve done with terragraph – the clean illustrations give off a warm and professional tone and I’d love to help work on something similar in the future.

 

The way in which the website is designed is really eye catching and straightforward too – i particularly love the animation that they used when displaying the physical product and how it works.  It is de-constructed as the site is scrolled down (allowing the users to see the company is being transparent in their product and what’s in it):